NASA Solicits Concepts for Asteroid-Capture Mission

NASA has set an ambitious goal: sending humans to an asteroid by 2025. In order to succeed, the mission will require a combination of current capabilities and yet-to-be-developed technologies, which the space agency is now seeking as part of a broad agency announcement.

NASA is soliciting proposals that will contribute to its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) -- specifically, technologies that include an alternate asteroid capture system, rendezvous sensor systems, and secondary payloads. The capture system must be capable of enormous operations in order to restrain a 30- to 1,000-metric-ton asteroid against a robotic spacecraft.

The proposals, due May 5, could be worth up to $6 million in total awards from NASA.